The Auditor: Rob Andrews has it his way at Burger King

In this 2009 file photo, Andrews laughs with staff in his office in the Rayburn House Office Building. In its latest financial disclosure report, Andrwes' campaign paid for meals at fast food restaurants and marked them down as meetings.Aristide Economopoulos/The Star-Ledger

For years, Andrews has been listing campaign purchases at places like Wawa and McDonald’s simply as "meal expense." What’s new in this quarterly report by the South Jersey congressman — who faces an investigation into previous campaign spending by the House Ethics Committee — is that those types of small expenditures are marked as "meal expense for meeting."

So on Jan. 18, Andrews or a campaign aide held a meeting at a Burger King in Cherry Hill, the reports show, paying a bill of $11.96. Ten days later, the campaign moved the venue to a nearby Chick-fil-A, where it bought $18.75 worth of food.

Similar meetings took place at Dunkin Donuts and Wendy’s.

Altogether, the Andrews campaign fund spent $2,758.34 on meals — most not at fast-food restaurants, but rather at several New Jersey diners and more than $1,130.80 on six campaign meetings at Washington’s Sonoma Restaurant and Wine Bar.

Asked about the restaurant bills, Fran Tagmire, Andrews’ chief of staff, said the campaign "discloses any and all expenses that it incurs throughout the election cycle. All expenses are fully in accordance with the law."

When former Mayor John Bencivengo of Hamilton was upset at Steve Cook, a former activist, for requesting records on how much the local school district was paying an insurance broker, his first instinct was to have a guy named Wayne call him.

"I would (expletive) with him bad. I’d call Wayne. I’ll talk to Wayne, too. I gotta do it in a way that’s, umâÂÂ ...âÂÂ " Bencivengo said in a February 2012 conversation secretly recorded by the broker-turned-informant, Marliese Ljuba, and played at the former mayor’s corruption trial. "I’m just gonna tell him that, you know, you gotta tell him he’s playing around with a, you’re playing around and it’s not right."

The Auditor wondered if Bencivengo was referring to Assemblyman Wayne DeAngelo (D-Mercer), whom Cook, now a Republican Assembly candidate, is running against.

After all, DeAngelo, a Hamilton resident, sits on the board of the ARC of Mercer County, where Cook is executive director. And DeAngelo’s name was on a list of potential witnesses at the trial, according to The Times of Trenton.

But asked by The Auditor, DeAngelo said Bencivengo never called him to lean on Cook. "No, I didn’t even know that Steve Cook had looked into an OPRA request," he said. "I had no idea. John Bencivengo never came to me in reference to anything. I was kind of caught off guard when I heard — what they said in court — that they’d maybe subpoena me as a witness."

Asked if DeAngelo ever reached out to him about the request, Cook declined to comment.

Pallone begins making his move

Rep. Frank Pallone (D-6th Dist.), who has made no secret of the fact that he’s interested in running for the Senate seat that Frank Lautenberg (D-N.J.) is vacating, is quietly building a campaign team, according to a report filed with the Federal Election Commission.

The report shows Pallone has hired several new consultants.

Pallone paid $6,500 to Berger Hirschberg Strategies for fundraising services. The politicians for whom the firm has worked include Gov. Andrew Cuomo of New York, former Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut and the 2004 presidential campaign of Wesley Clark, a retired Army general.

In addition, Pallone has paid more than $5,000 in salary to Jennifer Godoski, a longtime New Jersey political operative.

And he has hired Samantha Parker, a former statewide field director for the Democratic State Committee, who worked as an organizer in the successful effort to vote down a ballot question in Maine to ban gay marriage.

A top staff aide to Pallone declined to comment on the jockeying.

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Leave it to Sweeney

A bipartisan group of lawmakers, including Senate President Stephen Sweeney (D-Gloucester), introduced a bill last week intended to remove the limit on how many permits the Division of Fish and Wildlife gives out "for the taking of beaver."

Under current law, the state can give out only 200 permits each year. Sweeney insisted the bill (S2665) was in response to a real problem.

"Not that I go out and hunt beavers," he said. "The problem is they’re actually causing flooding problems where I live."

Sen. Steve Oroho (R-Sussex), another sponsor, said the restrictions date to the 1940s and ’50s.

"I think it was put on because the beaver population was in decline," Oroho said.

Sweeney explained it this way: "For example, you can hunt groundhogs any time you want."